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Dessert

Parkin or Leeds Gingerbread

A gingerbread cake made with oatmeal, treacle, brown sugar, butter, and powdered ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Parkin or Leeds Gingerbread

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the dough

  1. Sift the oatmeal into a large bowl.

  2. Mix in the treacle, brown sugar, melted butter, and powdered ginger.

  3. Work the mixture well together.

Rest and shape

  1. Let it rest for 24 hours.

  2. Shape the mixture into cakes.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + gingertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,152 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Oatmeal
Provides the bulk and structure that holds the cakes together.
Treacle
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a dark colour, and helps bind the mixture.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and deepens the flavour.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer texture.
Powdered ginger
Adds warm spice aroma and flavour.

The step that matters

Let it rest for 24 hours. Resting lets the oats absorb the treacle and melted butter evenly, so the mixture firms up and holds its shape when shaped into cakes.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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